Lette blyants rids 1896

This light pencil sketch was made by Niels Larsen Stevns, though we don’t know exactly when. It invites us to think about what a drawing can be and the institutional conditions that allow us to see it here in the Statens Museum for Kunst. Stevns was born in Denmark in 1864, and this work is consistent with the kind of understated, impressionistic studies he undertook throughout his career. But how do we look at what seems to be a blank page? What does it mean to display a drawing that seems unfinished? Perhaps, it allows us to appreciate the artist's process, or to see the bare minimum of work as a work in itself. To understand this work better, we might ask what art education looked like in Denmark at the turn of the century. What was considered displayable, and what was not? Exploring such questions can help us understand the social and institutional conventions that shape our experience of art.